2016 — 17 July: Sunday

When my son phoned me last night1 I was:

Being a simple-minded "belt and braces" sort of chap — and after having been very nearly very badly burned by Windows 7 and its peculiar "take" on simple drive mirroring six years ago — my own approach is now just to throw a little money at the "problem" by running a couple of RAID1 mirror pairs in two, separate state-of-the-NAS-art Synology two-bay boxes. Agreed, it's not the cheapest solution, nor does it offer the highest capacity (at 50% of the disk space!) but heh, it works for me.2

Post-Brexit tremors

Junior admitted his surprise at the severity of the UK's initial post-Brexit tremors. Bear in mind he and his g/f both live and work inside the London hi-tech, hi-wage, reality-distorting "bubble", so were firmly convinced the crusty old EU had nothing to offer them. We had agreed to differ on their last visit here when I learned they both intended to vote "Leave". They had both been quite keen to kick off some forceful education to convince me of the error of my opinion, but since I'm comfortable with my own prejudices I headed that off at the pass. (Christa might have straightened them out, but it would have been a fiery ding-dong! I prefer a quiet life.)

I pointed out he will end up "enjoying" the new régime a lot longer than I will have to. He laughingly agreed his vote could have been a mistake. My own decision (to vote "Remain") had been finely-balanced. I wonder how many "Leave" voters now feel regret?

The key EU arguments pro and contra across the long list of topics — consumer concerns, cost, education, research, energy, environment, food, defence, immigration, policing borders, sovereignity, law, trade, economic policy, travel, living or working overseas — clearly overloaded the average voter. Mix in the shamelessly-lying politicians, the disgusting "popular" media, and our guvmint's pitiful pair of ballot form tick boxes. Emotions trumped facts, whether I like the result or not.

To celebrate...

... my acquisition, yesterday, of the one Ron Cobb book that had been (long) missing from my little collection, I've now assembled a few notes here. It's a hobby. Chaps need hobbies.

There's a...

... potentially useful little checklist in the Grauniad on recognising a dodgy statistic. If I thought any Tory politicians read that left-wing rag I would hate them to think its intent is satirical (rather than being lifted from the recent "Leave" campaign playbook):

  1. Use a real number, but change its meaning
  2. Make the number look big (but not too big)
  3. Casually imply causation from correlation
  4. Choose your definitions carefully
  5. Use total numbers rather than proportions (or whichever way suits your argument)
  6. Don't provide any relevant context
  7. Exaggerate the importance of a possibly illusory change
  8. Prematurely announce the success of a policy initiative using unofficial selected data
  9. If all else fails, just make the numbers up

Actually (unless I'm dreaming again) I suspect it could have been lifted from Darrell Huff's 1954 classic:

Darrell Huff Book

The late Mel Calman's cover and cartoons alone are well worth at least 45.6% of the 50p I spent back in 1975.

The meaning...

... of the word "honour" is clearly mutable. I wonder what my pair of Pakistani ex-neighbours (both NHS doctors when living here) would have to say:

honour?

An excellent...

... set of upgrade instructions for getting my system from Linux Mint 17.3 to Mint 18. (But, as nothing's currently broken, and my system is supported until 2019, I'm perfectly content to keep BlackBeast Mk III at its present level.) I shall let Skylark and the NUC bear the brunt of any experimentation for the time being.

I realise guvmints operate...

... mysteriously, and all Prime Ministers are a lot cleverer than I am, but really!

The appointment of Boris Johnson to the post of UK foreign secretary is no doubt a fine example of British humour: the former London mayor is to diplomacy what Stalin was to democracy.
It's not every day that a country appoints as its global representative a known liar, a character for whom gross exaggeration, insult and racist innuendo seem utterly untroubling, a man apparently devoid of deep conviction about anything other than his own importance. "It wouldn't surprise me now if Britain put Dracula in charge of the ministry of health," scoffed the German politician Rolf Mützenich, spokesman for diplomatic affairs at the SPD...

Jean Quatremer in Grauniad


  

Footnotes

1  We are neither of us terribly 'good' at staying in close contact, and we'd not talked since the EU referendum.
2  I was unaware that Dell (for example) no longer considers RAID5 as good practice for business critical data. Increasing drive sizes (above 1 TB, which very clearly shows the [four year] age of their report) mean RAID5 sets take longer to rebuild. The risk of further problems during any necessary rebuilding thus outweighs the performance and size benefits. Logical, Mr Spock.